The importance of E-cadherin binding partners to evaluate the pathogenicity of E-cadherin missense mutations associated to HDGC

In hereditary diffuse gastric cancer (HDGC), CDH1 germline gene alterations are causative events in 30% of the cases. In 20% of HDGC families, CDH1 germline mutations are of the missense type and the mutation carriers constitute a problem in terms of genetic counseling and surveillance. To access the pathogenic relevance of missense mutations, we have previously developed an in vitro method to functionally characterize them. Pathogenic E-cadherin missense mutants fail to aggregate and become more invasive, in comparison with cells expressing the wild-type (WT) protein. Herein, our aim was to develop a complementary method to unravel the pathogenic significance of E-cadherin missense mutations. We used cells stably expressing WT E-cadherin and seven HDGC-associated mutations (five intracellular and two extracellular) and studied by proximity ligation assays (PLA) how these mutants bind to fundamental regulators of E-cadherin function and trafficking. We focused our attention on the interaction with: p120, β-catenin, PIPKIγ and Hakai. We showed that cytoplasmic E-cadherin mutations affect the interaction of one or more binding partners, compromising the E-cadherin stability at the plasma membrane and likely affecting the adhesion complex competence. In the present work, we demonstrated that the study of the interplay between E-cadherin and its binding partners, using PLA, is an easy, rapid, quantitative and highly reproducible technique that can be applied in routine labs to verify the pathogenicity of E-cadherin missense mutants for HDGC diagnosis, especially those located in the intracellular domain of the protein.